


Queen of my Fate

by Missy



Category: Alternate Universe Works, Princess Bride (1987)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Buttercup is the Dread Pirate Roberts, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Pirates, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27058345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Florin is too small of a village to keep someone as boundlessly curious as Buttercup hemmed in for long..
Relationships: Buttercup/Westley (Princess Bride)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Queen of my Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ForsythiaRising](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForsythiaRising/gifts).



She finds the mask – soft as velvet, crushed and creased with time and age – at the bottom of the old trunk her mother left behind when she fled the farm in the middle of the night with a red-haired freckled man, leaving Buttercup’s poor father to die alone of heartbreak.

Buttercup sits back on her heels and studies what she’d discovered. Beyond the mask there is a shapeless black tunic and men’s riding trousers, and a sword, sheathed in black leather. 

Who was this woman she’d called mother for so long? Buttercup doesn’t know. But when she picks the sword up, its heft feels natural in her grip, as if she were made to parry with it.

*** 

At sixteen – tired of cows and pasture and the smell of sweaty horses - she cuts her hair off and sets sail for Hispaniola. She knows that the _Revenge_ sails there, and she proceeds to make herself quite valuable on a merchant class ship, working her way up the rungs with steely determination – until she’s the first mate.

Buttercup allows the mask to cover her, to protect if not consume her – nightly, she learns how to fence under the bright moon. Daily, she helps guide the ship through the waters. She learns how to navigate, tie ropes, and operate a sickbay. 

When she manages to find the _Revenge_ – idling in port one afternoon, inconspicuous by nondescript exterior and infamous by its crew – she jumps aboard without an invitation. 

*** 

It doesn’t take her long to convince the man in charge – who is not the real or first Roberts himself – to train her in the ways of privateering. He trains the crew to respect her edicts. Soon, he takes his retirement, and she’s in charge of the galleon. 

Buttercup collects strays and chests of gold; a Spanish swordsman looking for revenge, a hulking strongman with a thick accent, and fine jewels, china, gold. Riches beyond telling. They become her best friends – the gold, the strongman, the swordsman.

The day they overtake a British passenger ship she’s in a generous mood. She spares the crewmembers and takes them aboard, planning to sell the ship when they come to port, and, if the men won’t hire on, scattering them among the colonies, where they can find their way home by themselves or hire on to other vessels. Buttercup cares not. She has the food stores – complete with fat barrels of white sugar - that she’d wished to gain.

One of the passengers – a man with shaggy blond hair and curious eyes and the clothing of a Florin farmer – lingers upon the deck as his compatriots are sent into the ship’s belly. His eyes are defiant as she pushes his shoulder.

“Get below,” she orders. Then, because some part of her compels her to say so, she calls on Inigo. “Take him to the galley. Farm boy, be sure to polish every piece of silver. I want to see my face shining in every spoon’s belly by midnight.”

He looks her up and down between strands of blond hair, his smile placid but his eyes flashing fire.

“As you wish,” he says, and keeps his hands behind his back the whole way down.


End file.
